Cooking Italy: Fried Calamari~

The first recipe on our February Cooking Italy schedule is Fried Calamari, by Marcella Hazan, as presented in her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. The recipe is beyond simplicity…it’s far more work to finish cleaning the calamari! The result is a light, airy breading that still has plenty of crunch, but doesn’t compete with the very delicate calamari flavor.

I shouldn’t complain about cleaning the calamari. The tubes were pretty much ready to go… a few still had little flaps attached. Don’t fret…they pull off very easily and should be added to your cookable collection. I needed to clean the tentacles a little better. There were still a number of beaks in place. Simply cut out the beak portion, even up the tentacles and add both sides to your cookables. The stringy pieces are edible, but kind of make a mess…I sacrificed them.